Watershed Planning

The South Big Horn Conservation District hosted a watershed planning educational meeting on January 16, 2014 to explain the TMDL (Total Maximum Daily Load) process, the local Big Horn Basin TMDL, and watershed planning efforts being implemented by the Washakie County Conservation District. Below is a news article written by Nathan Oster, Greybull Standard, covering the meeting.

Message to producers: Focus on water improvement not
numbersBy NATHAN OSTERGreybull StandardA contingent from Washakie County encouraged South Big
Horn County producers not to get hung up on numbers during a Total Maximum
Daily Load (TMDL) educational meeting Thursday night near Greybull.Called by the South Big Horn Conservation District and
held at the Weed and Pest Building off U.S. Highway 310, the meeting featured a
presentation on watershed planning by Cathy Rosenthal, the watershed
coordinator for the Wyoming Association of Conservation Districts. The meeting
also included an explanation of what improvements have already occurred within
the South Big Horn Conservation District.But because they have been there and done that, Tori
Dietz, director of the Washakie County Conservation District, and two members
of their district’s steering committee, Vance Lungren Jr. and Doug Hamilton,
were given top billing.The focus of their efforts were Slick Creek and Sage
Creek, two of the six streams identified as being impaired in Washakie County.
Dietz noted that because those two creeks had both agricultural and urban/rural
interaction, the decision was made to “throw their money” into improving those
two. Septic systems were replaced, feedlots cleaned up and relocated. The original intent was to prove the DEQ wrong — that they
weren’t impaired. But that didn’t happen. “We proved them right,” said Dietz.
They then tried to get the two creeks delisted for bacteria, but “horrific
spring rains” one year derailed that process and made monitoring and drawing
conclusions from the water testing next to impossible.“The moral is, we forgot about the stupid numbers,” said
Dietz. “You can’t use bacteria as an indicator because you don’t know where it
lives, why it lives or how long it lives.”Instead they focused on improving the water through
focused improvements, and they believe that they’ve made positive strides in
that area.“We had a whole truckload of lemons dumped on us,” said
Lungren. “Your job as producers is to try to make lemonade out of it. We got
hung up on the numbers. They said it came from livestock grazing. Our problem
was e-coli. Well, we could never understand where it was coming from. We got
hung up on theory and models. I’d encourage you to step over that.”Lungren continued, “Once we got to some of the solutions
that they listed for us, we started picking out a few that would work in our
areas that would benefit our producers. Your job as producers is to look that
list over and make sure it’s going to be profitable for other producers.”Hamilton added, “We wanted to figure out what the numbers
mean, why specific areas were listed when others weren’t. But we couldn’t come
to a conclusion. We thought we could narrow it down, prove where the problem
was. But we came to realize it wasn’t going to be fun to point fingers. We
needed producers who wanted to do it. So we decided the money was best spent being
put on the ground, getting things done we knew would help.”BackgroundLinda Hamilton of the South Big Horn Conservation District
said the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality gave conservation
districts 13 years to do projects to attempt to get the fecal coliform (e.
coli) figures down. The DEQ hired a consultant, RESPEC from South Dakota, to
develop the TMDL for the Big Horn River watershed. According to the draft
report from RESPEC, “Section 303(d) of the Clean Water Act and the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Water Quality Planning and Management
Regulations (40 CFR 130) require states to develop Total Maximum Daily Loads
(TMDLs) for waterbodies not meeting applicable water-quality standards or
guidelines for the protection of designated uses under technology-based
controls. TMDLs specify the maximum pollutant amount a waterbody can receive
and still meet water quality standards. Based on a calculation of the total
allowable load, TMDLs allocate pollutant loads to sources to incorporate a
margin of safety. TMDL pollutant load reduction goals for significant sources
provide a scientific basis for restoring surface water quality by linking the
development and implementation of control actions to the attainment and
maintenance of water-quality standards and designated uses.“The intent of this document is to clearly identify the
components of a TMDL, support adequate public participation, and facilitate the
EPA review. The TMDL was developed in accordance with Section 303(d) of the
federal Clean Water Act and guidance developed by the EPA. This TMDL document
addresses E. coli impairments in the Big Horn River Watershed.”According to the draft report from RESPEC, “The efforts to
facilitate public education, review, and comment while developing the Big Horn
River Watershed TMDLs included presentations on the findings of the assessment
at public meetings to stakeholders in the watershed, quarterly newsletters, a
project website, public announcements, and a 30-day public notice period for review
and comment.“The findings from these public meetings and comments were
taken into consideration when developing the TMDLs. The background information presented at Thursday’s meeting
included a presentation by the district outlining streams listed in the report
for e. coli Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) for the Big Horn River watershed.Streams in Big Horn County include Big Horn River from the
confluence with the Nowood River to a point 36.1 miles upstream, Big Horn River
from the confluence with the Greybull River upstream to the confluence with the
Nowood River, Paint Rock Creek from the confluence with the Nowood River to a
point 5.2 miles upstream, Nowood River from the confluence with the Big Horn
River to a point 13.4 miles upstream, Greybull River from the confluence with
the Big Horn River to Sheets Flats Bridge, Granite Creek from the confluence with
Shell Creek upstream 5.8 miles near the Antelope Butte Ski Area, Beaver Creek
from the confluence with Shell Creek to a point 7.9 miles upstream, Shell Creek
from the confluence with the Big Horn River to a point 5.3 miles upstream, Big
Horn River from the confluence with the Greybull River to a point 10.5 miles
downstream and Dry Creek from the confluence with the Big Horn River to a point
4.7 miles upstream.DiscussionGeorge Kelso opened Thursday’s meeting with an overview of
where things stand.“Now that we have the TMDL report in its final form, we
can start moving into implementation — and what we can do to take care of water
quality problems,” said Kelso. “We want to get people to think about how they
can use this process to benefit their operations … how we can clean it up and
also see some personal benefit from it.”Monte Bush of the USDA-NRCS office in Greybull said the
district used grant money to address problem septic systems and livestock
facilities. Twenty septic systems were replaced and 18 different livestock
facilities were relocated to address concerns about runoff into the water supply.Bush said that while the improvements didn’t appear to
have a big impact on numbers, the grant program still did a lot of good. When
projects were being selected, not a lot of consideration was given to their
location. “Whoever came in, we tried to fund,” said Bush, adding that it was
something of a “postage stamp” approach.“What we’d like to see moving forward,” he said, “is to
focus the funding on a watershed basis on a smaller area — and really get after
that specific area to see if the numbers will come down.”Linda Hamilton said some of the efforts in the Kirby Creek
watershed have paid off. On that stream, the required load reductions needed to
meet the TMDL is 30 percent, the lowest percentage of any county stream. Most
of the rest are in the 70s, 80s and 90s.“The tremendous amount of work down there has started to
show a benefit,” said Hamilton.Kelso said that while the work done by the SBH district
didn’t impact numbers, it oftentimes fixed septic systems that were illegal,
thereby removing the liability of the landowner. Those who had feedlots moved
got “tremendously useful” corrals out of the deal.The important thing, all of the presenters agreed, is to
at least make an attempt to improve the watersheds. Doing nothing could result
in greater involvement and possibly even fines from the federal Environmental
Protection Agency, according to Rosenthal.Hamilton and Kelso emphasized that money is available for
producers who wish to participate, and that the watershed improvement program
is voluntary. “We’re here to help you,” said Hamilton. “That’s our mission as a
conservation district board; we aren’t here to make you do anything.”Kelso said funding is available to producers — they just
need to come forward and express interest in doing what they can to improve
water quality.“What we’re hoping,” he said, “Is that we can find a group
of people in an area who would like to work on some things so we can focus our
efforts and go after funding. There are a lot of potential sources. Not as much
money as a few years ago, but for our area, there’s still quite a bit.”Kelso added that there was an important takeaway from the
Washakie County presentation.“What they basically said was, ‘For years, we’ve been
studying water quality issues, monitoring, doing all these types of things,’
and they all cost a lot of money, but didn’t really clean up the water,’” said
Kelso. “Well they got to a point where they could go after money to help
producers.“We’re at a place now where we can start doing the same.
We’ve got a lot of septic systems out there that could use some improvement.
And our past efforts have cleaned up the worst of the feedlots, but there are
still others out there.”